Any other Linux users?

[Drew Terril]

Just curious as to whether there are any others out there who primarily operate one of the distros of Linux. My best friend turned me on to it a few years back, and I love being able to extend the life of older computers (I'm notorious for being a tightwad when it comes to buying things). My newest computer is a Windows 7 machine from 2010, but it doesn't handle vibrations well and is useless while mobile in the field. I have a much older Dell that I partitioned and loaded Ubuntu on (I previously had the OS on the Toshiba laptop I got as a graduation present in 05 but broke the screen on). It's a rock solid D610 that I upgraded the RAM and put a brand new battery on. I'm currently running 14.04 and it runs like a dream. I just couldn't justify the expense of a newer computer, and am not terribly fond of Windows 8 on top of that.

I've never done any kind of streaming, and I still have decent options for radar software (albeit no GRLevel3) that gives me enough for my very basic needs. I currently use AWeather, which actually contains more than I'm used to using.

 

[StephenHenry]

I used to run XFCE or Ubuntu on an old Dell d610 as well. Smooth as butter. I ran GRLevel3 via Wine, and it was totally usable. I remember there being a bug or two, but nothing that ruined the experience.

 

[Tarmo Tanilsoo]

Lubuntu(which is Ubuntu with LXDE desktop) user here. YMMV with GRLevel3 and Wine though, it might work on one machine but might not work on another. I usually use a self written application for radar viewing nowadays, although when I am on a chase, which happens in this part of the world, I am mostly visual anyways and check weather situation on the phone.

 

[Kyle Creasey]

Unfortunately I can't add into the Poll. You happened to get in Fedora, but there are a lot more RedHat based OSes out there. I'm currently running Scientific Linux 7.

So to be more fair, I'd recommend polling these OS types

RedHat-based (includes Fedora, Scientific Linux, CentOS)
Debian-based (Includes Ubuntu and it's variants)
SUSE-based (SUSE Enterprise as well as OpenSUSE)
and then Other for those special snowflakes even in the Linux world.

I am a meteorologist, but right now I happen to be a Linux professional.

 

[Todd Rector]

I have used Linux Mint as my primary desktop software for many years (I am a Linux I.T. guy) but I don't use it while chasing, unless you count Pykl3 and Radarscope on an Android tablet.

 

[Drew Terril]

Kyle,

I understand your point. I just went by the more commonly used (or that I've seen used more often) by non-IT (aka average) people. I did purposely leave out a couple of distros that are more corporate-oriented.

Glad to know I'm not the only one running Linux. Good to know about running GRLevel3 via WINE. I may have to try that when the chasing budget goes up. I plan on running that D610 until it won't run anymore.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

I'm a huge Linux user and work on it professionally. I have a CentOS 6 machine running here at home running as a fileserver/router/gempak machine plus running some VM's in KVM. I've got a CentOS 7 Dell R610 in a datacenter in Michigan running mine and a bunch of other websites on probably 5 or 6 virtual instances in KVM.

At work we're running mostly Redhat, although I've mixed some CentOS in as well. I want to run a rocks cluster as well when we get our new Cisco UCS gear in.

 

[Drew Terril]

Nice. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't jealous. I haven't delved very deep into the Linux world yet other than my normal use on my laptop. We're still stuck on Windows at work.

 

[Todd Rector]

I *love* CentOS and we use it everywhere we aren't forced to use AIX or RHEL at work (except for Linux Mint desktops). I just started using CentOS 7 last week. Making the shift to systemd commands and MariaDB has a bit of a learning curve, but seems to be the wave of the future.
*happily riding the wave*

 

[Ben Holcomb]

systemd is a pain. I still haven't figured out how to get my ldm on an autostart script with CentOS 7, so I'm just manual commands and a nagios alert if it isn't running. I'm using Percona for just about everything, so the MariaDB thing hasn't been a big deal for me.

I've been running full enforcing selinux on all of my servers now too. That has proven to have its own set of challenges.

 

[Todd Rector]

I LOVE Percona (especially the Percona Tools) and have it running on some of my mission-critical systems. For most of our PHP-based websites, we made the decision to move to MariaDB as an upgrade path since it's part of the CentOS 7 distribution and gets us away from the fear of what Oracle may do with MySQL in the future. Percona has a special place in my heart, though. Frankly, I am a little worried about the maturity of MariaDB, but time will tell.

SELinux is a BIG headache in the LAMP stack, especially with SSL. I admire your bravery.

 

[Drew Terril]

Y'all are a lot deeper in than I can follow. That's foreign territory for me. I had a pretty long time starting in high school where I stopped messing with computers. I got back into it a few years ago and I'm still playing catchup. I use the term playing catchup very loosely, because I have a LONG way to go to get caught up on the software and OS end. I wish I had more time to read up on stuff.

 

[Todd Rector]

Drew - if you feel like playing around with a user-friendly desktop distribution, I highly recommend Linux Mint. It comes pre-installed with a lot of helpful software, and runs fairly efficiently. It's also good about finding your hardware correctly and installing the right drivers. I use Mint on both my laptops and my desktop at work.
Otherwise, using linux of any distribution will help you discover the power (and weaknesses) of the operating system, and I think you have already found you don't have to have a beefy system to run linux - especially if you work from the command prompt and don't install the GUI front end.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

I started/fumbled through way back in the Redhat 5.2/6.0 (the first time) days and didn't really have a 'oh, duh' moment until I had a Redhat instance running in the brand new VMWare Workstation in 1999. Shortly after that I became interested in Slackware and learned how to compile everything from Apache to a kernel from scratch and even tried my hand at Linux from scratch and gentoo. I used Slackware up until 2008 or so when I switched to Fedora. Patrick being sick really was detrimental to slackware. I got sick of having to constantly update Fedora, and don't want to pay for RHEL, so here I am using CentOS now for pretty much everything.

With all that said, I feel like I learned a lot more when I had to fumble through the command line and am not sure Mint would be the 'best' choice for someone learning. Honestly gentoo or Linux from scratch would be the better way to go for someone wanting to learn the inner workings in my opinion. You don't learn much when you have pointy-clicky interfaces.

 

[Todd Rector]

I started with RH 5x as well. It's amazing how much has changed since then!
I think Mint is good if you are looking for an alternative to Windows in a desktop environment, but I agree that working from a command line is the only way to effectively unleash the power of linux - but it's a steep learning curve. Regardless, if *I* could do it, anyone can do it.
Server side, I think CentOS is the way to go. It's basically RHEL without the price tag. FYI Ben, I went through exactly the same thing you did with Fedora. When it first came out, I was all like "neato", but that quickly turned into "another update? Whyyyyyyy??"